C h a r a c t e r4 9belongs, in a word, to the rise of modern individualism. Individuals
are now defined by what is peculiar to them, such as their signature
or inimitable personality. What distinguishes us from each other is
more important than what we have in common. What makes Tom
Sawyer Tom Sawyer is all those attributes he does not share with
Huck Finn. Lady Macbeth is what she is because of her ferocious
will and thrusting ambition, not because she suffers, laughs, grieves
and sneezes. Since these are things she shares with the rest of her
species, they do not really count as part of her character. Pressed to
an extreme, this rather curious conception of men and women
suggests that a great deal, perhaps most, of what they are and do is
not really them. It is not distinctive to them; and since character or
personality is thought to be incomparable, it cannot count as
part of it.
Today, the term ‘character’ means an individual’s mental and
moral qualities, as in Prince Andrew’s comment that being shot at
during the Falklands War was ‘very character- building’. Perhaps he
would care to have his character built a little more often. The word
also, of course, refers to figures in novels, plays, movies and the like.
We still use the term of actual people, however, as in ‘Who were
those characters throwing up out of the Vatican window?’ It can
also mean a capricious or idiosyncratic individual, as in ‘By God,
sir, he’s a character!’ The phrase is interestingly used more about
men than about women, and reflects a very English delight in
eccentricity. The English tend to admire curmudgeonly, noncon-
formist types who make a point of not fitting in with their fellows.
Such oddballs are agreeably incapable of being anything but them-
selves. People who carry a stoat on their shoulder or wear brown
paper bags over their heads are said to be characters, which suggests
that their aberrations are to be genially indulged. There is a spirit of